Category: solace

Making These Words More Than Words

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This is another day, O Lord.
I know not what it will bring forth,
but make me ready, Lord,
for whatever it may be.
If I am to stand up,
help me to stand bravely.
If I am to sit still,
help me to sit quietly.
If I am to lie low,
help me to do it patiently.
And if I am to do nothing,
let me do it gallantly.
Make these words more than words,
and give me the Spirit of Jesus.
Amen.
~Book of Common Prayer

The world is overwhelmed with words coming from radio, TV, podcasts, books, magazines, social media or simply our own thoughts.

I feel barraged with what to think, how to think, who to believe, who not to believe, and why to risk thinking and believing at all.

I’m left desperate for a need for silence, just to quiet myself.
All I need is to know what I am to do with this new day,
how to best live this moment.

So I come to the Word, the only Word to think and believe.
It explains.
It responds.
It restores.
It refreshes.
It consoles.
It understands.
It embodies the Spirit I need far more than I need silence.

The words I seek to hear are far more than Words.
They are God Himself.

Amen
and again
Amen.

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Get Up, All of You

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Little girl. Old girl. Old boy.
Old boys and girls with high blood pressure and arthritis,
and young boys and girls with tattoos and body piercing.
You who believe, and you who sometimes believe
and sometimes don’t believe much of anything,
and you who would give almost anything to believe
if only you could.
You happy ones and you who can hardly remember
what it was like once to be happy.
You who know where you’re going and how to get there
and you who much of the time aren’t sure you’re getting anywhere. “Get up,” he says, all of you – all of you! –
and the power that is in him is the power to give life
not just to the dead like the child,
but to those who are only partly alive,
which is to say to people like you and me
who much of the time live with our lives closed
to the wild beauty and miracle of things,
including the wild beauty and miracle of every day we live
and even of ourselves.
~Frederick Buechner -from Secrets in the Dark

He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”).
Mark 5:41

I usually awake each morning before 5:30 without an alarm, just as I did in high school, through college and medical school, during my work years and having-babies years.

Now, in my retirement years, for no reason at all, I still wake up early.

I just can’t help it. I trained myself to be able to get up early, to do chores, make kids’ breakfasts and lunches for school, commute to work, be ready for what I needed to do and be that day.

Even now that I don’t have to, my body still gets up.

But my brain and my soul are slow to wake, and some days they prefer to stay under the covers, closed off to all that wild beauty within and beyond me.

I have no time to waste being only partly alive.
I need to listen to the summons: “Get up!”
And right now, I need to get up,
– all of me –
especially that full of miracle and wild beauty.

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What is Waiting Behind the Wall

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If ever we see those gardens again,
The summer will be gone—at least our summer.
Some other mockingbird will concertize
Among the mulberries, and other vines
Will climb the high brick wall to disappear.

How many footpaths crossed the old estate—
The gracious acreage of a grander age—
So many trees to kiss or argue under,
And greenery enough for any mood.
What pleasure to be sad in such surroundings.

At least in retrospect. For even sorrow
Seems bearable when studied at a distance,
And if we speak of private suffering,
The pain becomes part of a well-turned tale
Describing someone else who shares our name.

Still, thinking of you, I sometimes play a game.
What if we had walked a different path one day,
Would some small incident have nudged us elsewhere
The way a pebble tossed into a brook
Might change the course a hundred miles downstream?

The trick is making memory a blessing,
To learn by loss the cool subtraction of desire,
Of wanting nothing more than what has been,
To know the past forever lost, yet seeing
Behind the wall a garden still in blossom.
~Dana Gioia “The Lost Garden” from Interrogations at Noon.

At present we are on the outside of the world,
the wrong side of the door. . . .
We cannot mingle with the splendours we see.
But all the leaves of the New Testament are rustling
with the rumour that it will not always be so.
Some day, God willing, we shall get in.
C.S. Lewis from The Weight of Glory

Memory can play tricks,
either smoothing over
the many potholes in the road of life,
or digging the holes so deep,
I fall in and am lost.

Whenever I am feeling regret
for the things I have done,
or all that I have left undone,
I remember I have walked on
paths of beauty beyond imagining.

I wouldn’t change much about what has been,
knowing there is much more beauty to come.

I remember gates and doors I could not open.
Just a peek told me all I needed to know:
there is a hidden, lost garden just waiting,
still blooming, still inspiring, still brimming
full of everything any of us could ever need.

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Astonishingly Free

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It’s an early summer day, going to be a hot one.
I’m away from home, I’m working; the sky is solidly blue
with just a chalk smear of clouds. So why this melancholy?
Why these blues? Nothing I’ve done seems to matter; I
could leave tomorrow and no one would notice, that’s how
invisible I feel. But look, there’s a pair of cardinals
on the weathered table, pecking at sunflower seeds
which I’ve brought from home. They don’t seem
particularly grateful. Neither does the sky, no matter
how I transcribe it. I wanted to do more in this life,
not the elusive prizes, but poems that astonish. A big flashy jay
lands on the table, scattering seeds and smaller birds.
They regroup, continue to hunt and peck on the lawn.
~Barbara Crooker, “Melancholia” from Some Glad Morning

photo by Josh Scholten

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the green heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
~Wendell Berry “The Peace of Wild Things” from The Selected Poems of Wendell Berry

Three years ago, I laid awake thinking about our son and his family’s ten hour overnight flight from Tokyo in progress. Our two young grandchildren were arriving here after 30 months of pandemic separation – to them, we were just faces on a screen.

They said a sorrowful sayonara to their grandparents and family there, arriving here to a new life thanks to my daughter-in-law’s newly issued green card after two years of waiting, new jobs, new language, new everything, with all their worldly belongings in suitcases.

From the largest city in the world to our little corner of the middle of nowhere.

Over the past three years,
I have watched them discover for themselves
the joys and sorrows of this part of the world.
When I look at things through their eyes,
I am reminded of the light beyond the darkness I fear,
there is peace amid the chaos,
there is a smile behind the tears,
there is stillness within the noisiness
there is rest despite our restlessness,
there is grace as we who are older give way to the younger.

I have given up on astonishing others.
Instead, astonishing is happening all around me;
I need only be a witness.

Measure me, sky!
    Tell me I reach by a song
Nearer the stars;
    I have been little so long.

Weigh me, high wind!
    What will your wild scales record?
Profit of pain,
    Joy by the weight of a word.

Horizon, reach out!
    Catch at my hands, stretch me taut,
Rim of the world:
    Widen my eyes by a thought.

Sky, be my depth,
    Wind, be my width and my height,
World, my heart’s span;
    Loveliness, wings for my flight.
~Leonora Speyer “Measure Me, Sky”

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Holding a Memory of Cherries

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We used to pick cherries over the hill
where we paid to climb wooden ladders
into the bright haven above our heads, the fruit
dangling earthward. Dark, twinned bells
ringing in some good fortune just beyond
our sight. I have lived on earth long enough
to know good luck arrives only on its way
to someone else, for it must leave you to the miracle
of your own misfortune, lest you grow weary
of harvest, of cherries falling from the crown of sky
in mid-summer, of hours of idle. Let there be
a stone of suffering. Let the fruit taste of sweetness
and dust. Let grief split your heart so precisely
you must hold, somehow, a memory of cherries—
tart talismans of pleasure—in the rucksack
of your soul. Taut skin, sharp blessing.

Luminous, ordinary and acute.
~Danusha Laméris “U-Pick Orchards”

Life is not a bowl of cherries,
unless you count the ones
that aren’t yet ripe, or are over-ripe,
or have a squirrel- or bird-bite taken,
or have shriveled to raisins on the tree.

Yes, there are perfect cherries
that shine in the dark, glistening with promise,
tempting us to climb high to pick them.

Those we really want usually are out of reach.

How can we know what perfection is
unless we experience where life falls short?

The lingering taste of grief,
the agony of waiting for word in a tragedy,
the gnawing emptiness of indescribable loss.

Only the memory of what was nearly perfect,
remembering what could have been
knowing what will someday be our reality
can ease the bitter pit of suffering now.

May the families of those swept away in flooding,
those who live in the path of war and violence,
those who hunger for justice, or starving for food,
those who struggle with life-threatening and chronic illness
somehow know the comfort of God’s perfection awaits them.
The Light and Goodness is there for us to taste,
yet just beyond our reach.

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A Sight Unsought

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I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night,
in the white and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe
of a finger-nail held to the candle,
Or paring of paradisaïcal fruit,
lovely in waning but lustreless,
Stepped from the stool,
drew back from the barrow,
of dark Maenefa the mountain;
A cusp still clasped him,
a fluke yet fanged him,
entangled him, not quit utterly.
This was the prized, the desirable sight,
unsought, presented so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me,
eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
~Gerard Manley Hopkins “Moonrise” June 19, 1876

how you can never reach it, no matter how hard you try,
walking as fast as you can, but getting nowhere,
arms and legs pumping, sweat drizzling in rivulets;
each year, a little slower, more creaks and aches, less breath.
Ah, but these soft nights, air like a warm bath, the dusky wings
of bats careening crazily overhead, and you’d think the road
goes on forever. Apollinaire wrote, “What isn’t given to love
is so much wasted,” and I wonder what I haven’t given yet.
A thin comma moon rises orange, a skinny slice of melon,
so delicious I could drown in its sweetness. Or eat the whole
thing, down to the rind. Always, this hunger for more.
~Barbara Crooker “How the Trees on Summer Nights Turn into a Dark River,” from More

The secret of seeing is,
then the pearl of great price. 
If I thought he could teach me to find it and keep it forever 
I would stagger barefoot
across a hundred deserts
after any lunatic at all. 
But although the pearl may be found,
it may not be sought.

The literature of illumination reveals this above all: 
although it comes to those who wait for it, 
it is always, even to the most practiced and adept, 
a gift and a total surprise.

I return from one walk 
knowing where the killdeer nests in the field by the creek
and the hour the laurel blooms. 
I return from the same walk a day later
scarcely knowing my own name.

Litanies hum in my ears; 
my tongue flaps in my mouth. 
Ailinon, alleluia!
~Annie Dillard from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

photo by Josh Scholten

The greatest gift is the one I stumble upon
rather than having desired, sought out, fought for.
Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m missing,
so oblivious to being surrounded by hidden treasures.

Surprise me, dear Lord. 

Though I regularly lament in the shadows,
though I try to hide under the blankets each morning,
slumbering through the tragic, the painful, the sorrow,
you send your gentle crescent light to awaken me.

So I lift my voice in praise and gratitude for your unexpected gift
that I didn’t know I needed, would never had thought to seek, 
the pearl of great price held out for me to take each day.

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Written as with a Sunbeam

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The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for,
among old parchments, or musty records.
They are written, as with a sun beam,
in the whole volume of human nature,
by the hand of the divinity itself;
and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.
~Alexander Hamilton, from  “The Farmer Refuted”

What sparkling flashes of God’s wit and brilliance—
His coruscations—
have caused your mind today to
run back up the sunbeam to the sun and given you cause
to give thanks and to worship the Lord?
~C.S. Lewis from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

photo by Nate Gibson

God illuminates through His Word,
not once but twice. 

In the beginning, He created
the sun and the moon to shine
upon bodies, hearts, and souls. 

Then, He came to light the world
from below as well as from above
so we could be saved from darkness.

By His descent to us,
because He leaves heaven’s light
to be in our arms and by our sides-
He illuminates us
so we reflect the light He brings:
loved
saved
despite all our efforts
to remain in the dark.

photo by Nate Gibson
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Renewed Pulse

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The cold remote islands
And the blue estuaries
Where what breathes, breathes
The restless wind of the inlets,
And what drinks, drinks
The incoming tide;

Where shell and weed
Wait upon the salt wash of the sea,
And the clear nights of stars
Swing their lights westward
To set behind the land;

Where the pulse clinging to the rocks
Renews itself forever;
Where, again on cloudless nights,
The water reflects
The firmament’s partial setting;

—O remember
In your narrowing dark hours
That more things move
Than blood in the heart.
Louise Bogan “Night” from The Blue Estuaries

 I know what my heart is like
Since your love died:
It is like a hollow ledge
Holding a little pool
Left there by the tide,
A little tepid pool,
Drying inward from the edge.
~Edna St. Vincent Millay “Ebb”

My mother was 58 when my father left her for a younger woman. 

For months, she withered,
her heart broken, her pulse erratic,
crying until there were no more tears left.

She began drying inward from her edges
despite the ebbing and flowing
of her heartbeat.

It took ten years,
but he came back like an overdue high tide.  

She was sure her love had died
but that tepid pool refilled
with water cool to the touch,
yet overflowing.

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June Trembling Like a Butterfly

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Green was the silence, wet was the light
the month of June trembled like a butterfly
~Pablo Neruda from “Sonnet XL”

Why do we bother with the rest of the day,
the swale of the afternoon,
the sudden dip into evening,
then night with his notorious perfumes,
his many-pointed stars?

This is the best—
throwing off the light covers,
feet on the cold floor,
and buzzing around the house on espresso—
maybe a splash of water on the face,
a palmful of vitamins—

but mostly buzzing around the house on espresso,
dictionary and atlas open on the rug,
the typewriter waiting for the key of the head,
a cello on the radio,
and, if necessary, the windows—
trees fifty, a hundred years old
out there,
heavy clouds on the way
and the lawn steaming like a horse
in the early morning.
~Billy Collins “Morning”

We are now four days into summer but aside from the date on the calendar, it would be difficult to prove otherwise.  After a dry stretch of warm late spring weather, it is now unseasonably cool, the skies stony gray, the rivers running full and fast, the ground peppered with puddles. Rain has fallen at night, hiding behind the cover of darkness as if ashamed of itself.  

As it should be.

What all this moisture will yield is acres and acres of towering grass growth, more grass than imaginable, more grass than we can keep mowed,  burying the horses up to their backs as they dive head long into the pasture. The Haflingers don’t need to lower their necks to graze,  choosing instead to simply strip off the ripe tops of the grasses as they forge paths through five foot forage. It is like children at a birthday party swiping the frosting off cupcake after cupcake, licking their fingers as they go. Instead of icing, the horses’ muzzles are smeared with dandelion fluff,  grass seed and buttercup petals.

In the northwest, June can tend to shroud its promise of longer days under clouds. Outdoor weddings brace for rain and wind with a supply of umbrellas, graduation potlucks are served in the garage and Fourth of July picnics stay safely under cover. There is a wary anticipation of solstice as it signals the slow inexorable return of darkness from which we have barely recovered.

So I tremble as I too splash through the squishiness of late June,  quivering like a wet butterfly emerging from its cocoon ready to unfurl its wings to dry, but unsure how to fly and uncertain of the new world that awaits.  In fact the dark empty cocoon can look mighty inviting on a rainy June night. If I could manage to squeeze myself back in, it might be worth a try.

After all, there is no place like home.

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Just a Pinch of God Inside

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To be blessed
said the old woman
is to live and work
so hard
God’s love
washes right through you
like milk through a cow

To be blessed
said the dark red tulip
is to knock their eyes out
with the slug of lust
implied by
your up-ended
skirt

To be blessed
said the dog
is to have a pinch
of God
inside you
and all the other dogs
can smell it
~Alicia Suskin Ostriker “The Blessing of the Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog” from The Book of Seventy

Some claim the origin of song
was a war cry
some say it was a rhyme
telling the farmers when to plant and reap
don’t they know the first song was a lullaby
pulled from a mother’s sleep
said the old woman

A significant
factor generating my delight in being
alive this springtime
is the birdsong
that like a sweeping mesh has captured me
like diamond rain I can’t
hear it enough said the tulip

Lifetime after lifetime
we surged up the hill
I and my dear brothers
thirsty for blood
uttering
our beautiful songs
said the dog
~Alicia Suskin Ostriker “Song” from The Old Woman, the Tulip, and the Dog

To be blessed is to know
God is inside all created things,
even those seemingly hopeless.

To be blessed is to sing
a lullaby of loving kindness
that settles a restless heart.

To be blessed is to become a blessing
so contagious, there is no hope of cure.

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Lyrics:
Oh! Hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us,
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.

Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow,
Oh weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow swinging seas!
~Rudyard Kipling “The White Seal”

translated lyrics from the Lakota:
Ah I say, I say to you I am speaking to you…
Ah I say, I say to you To you I am saying it
My kind-hearted boy go to sleep
Tomorrow will be nice
I am speaking to you

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